Sellers Concerned eBay Stores Changes Will Hurt Traffic

eBay's decision to remove two graphic elements from the search results page on November 9th in an effort to make its search results appear faster have sellers concerned about the effect on traffic to their Stores. eBay is removing the "Get More Results" module and "Matching eBay Stores" module on search results, and will leave the "See all matching eBay Stores" as a text link in the same location.

A spirited discussion is taking place on the eBay Stores board (link), where the original poster reported that the module had a direct affect on sales and traffic to their eBay Store. An eBay employee has been responding to buyers' and sellers' concerns.

In its announcement, eBay said the features were not widely used by buyers and take extra time to load. In a letter to AuctionBytes, a reader wrote that there were four issues with the change:

Why - The matching stores module, which is relevant to a search when so many other modules irrelevant to a search will remain? Specifically banner ads on the top and left side, as well as the "recently viewed" module all of which are irrelevant to the search being conducted and slow down page loading far more than this relevant.

Ebay promised to group changes into 2 or 3 releases per year and then pulled this one in on us.

Ebay promised 60 days notice but gives us less than a weeks notice on this change to visibility.

Ebay promised no changes in the important 4th quarter, yet is rolling this out, with no clear understanding of it's impact just in time to possible mess up holiday sales in stores.

AuctionBytes also received other letters from readers about the issue, found on the Letters to the Editor blog, where readers can leave comments.

About the author:

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.

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